Gang Strife Claims Innocent Boy : Crime: A Long Beach teen-ager is shot watching TV. Police say he is a bystander killed in worsening Cambodian-Latino turf war.

A 17-year-old Southeast Asian immigrant died in his mother’s arms and three others were wounded in a shooting that police described Tuesday as the latest incident in an escalating war between Cambodian and Latino gang members in Long Beach.

“It’s still going on day by day,” said Sam Chittapalo, an Asian affairs officer for the Long Beach Police Department. “They just keep shooting.”

Killed was Dung Chao, the son of a Cambodian woman and an American soldier stationed in Vietnam during the war. The mother and son had emigrated to the United States from Vietnam less than a year ago to escape racial discrimination.

According to a police spokesman, Chao--who friends said was not a gang member--was watching the 10 p.m. television news in his family’s apartment Monday night when about seven shots shattered a front window. Hit in the upper body, Chao staggered into a back bedroom where he collapsed and died in his mother’s arms.

Also wounded and taken to area hospitals were were Luc Van Nguyen, 31; his 4-year-old son, Luong Van, and brother-in-law Prach Thach, 16. They were reported in stable condition.

My Linh Chao, the dead youth’s mother, said through an interpreter that her son had been shot shortly after entering the living room from the back of the house, where he had been studying English.

“It was a complete surprise,” she said. “They all lay on the couch bleeding.”

Police said they believe the shots were fired by two Latino gang members who apparently entered a nearby yard to take aim at the upstairs window. The two-bedroom apartment, located near Anaheim Street in the heart of the city’s Cambodian community, is shared by several Cambodian families.

Chittapalo said the incident followed the pattern of several recent shootings in the area involving Latinos and Cambodians. A March 26 incident, he said, left two Latinos injured. On April 1, in apparent retaliation, a group of Latinos shot three Cambodians, killing one of them. Last weekend, Chittapalo said, a Latino teen-ager riding a bicycle was shot by a group of Cambodians.

The March 26 incident, he said, resulted in the arrests of four suspected Cambodian gang members. Police said late Tuesday that they had made no arrests in the most recent shooting.

“They take quick shots and then run away,” Chittapalo said of the recent string of incidents. “Sometimes they can’t even identify who is a gang member.”

A spokesman for the Long Beach Unified School District said there was no indication that the slain 11th-grader had been involved in gangs.

Friends and neighbors on Tuesday described him as a good-looking youngster with an interest in history whose dream was to learn English, become an American citizen, join the U.S. Army and one day return to his native country to help liberate it from the communists.

Chao’s mother said she brought her son to the United States 11 months ago to escape the discrimination he had experienced as the son of a U.S. serviceman with whom she had lost contact years ago.

“It’s hard to live in Vietnam,” she said. “I love this country because it’s free here.”

With her son gone, Chao said she fears for the future. “I’m alone now,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.”

Neighbors gathering at the apartment on Tuesday to express their condolences, meanwhile, were expressing fears of their own.

“Any time I hear shots I get scared,” said Sokheoun Noun, a Cambodian student living in the building next door. “I think maybe I’ll move now.”